The most unkindest cut of all

His dulcet tones are among the most recognisable on radio: so one side-effect of Gareth O’Callaghan’s incurable illness seems particularly cruel...

When we got to the prognosis and realised it was fatal, I was shocked

MRI scans were ‘sinister’ and ‘insidious’.

‘Initially, they’d hoped it was something like an infection that I’d maybe picked up when I was younger that had lived on,’ Gareth admits. ‘Two months before we knew, my GP had discussed the possibility that it might be MSA. Unfortunately, after a few weeks, they comfirmed MSA. It was shocking, in that it confirmed what I had suspected for a long while.’

Like any journalist worth their salt, Gareth and Paula set about researching the condition.

‘When we got to the prognosis, and realised it was fatal, I was shocked,’ Gareth admits. ‘I don’t know how to express the moment I read that, other than a sudden sense of, this is it. There’s no way of backing out.

‘It was a blow out of nowhere,’ he adds. ‘Reading about it and suspecting it is one thing, but when you’re told by top neurologists that, yes, you do have it, it’s terrifying. Over the following few days, I began to rationalise things. Like, “okay, I’m now 57. Some of my friends are no longer here, some have died suddenly”.

‘I tried to be logical about it: “Well, look, you’ve had a great few decades so far, so do what you can to keep this thing at bay”.’

Gareth may appear somewhat sanguine about what lies ahead on the face of it, but he says that the only real thing that has helped him accept things is living in the here and now.

The past is behind him, he says, and the future doesn’t yet exist: better to cherish a good day and be fully in the moment. He has practised mindfulness for years, a technique he mastered after battling depression — he wrote a book about it, entitled A Day Called Hope, in 2003.

‘I try not to worry too much about tomorrow,’ he admits. ‘If you don’t say to yourself, “stop thinking about tomorrow”, you tend to get very afraid of the future.

‘What’s happened has given me the ability to appreciate what’s important in life. We tolerate so much bulls***, it’s like life is pushing and pulling us. But this has made me a better person. I’ve eliminated negativity and negative people, and I’ve surrounded myself with positive people.’ Gareth says he talks to his late father all the time: ‘I still do feel him, very much around me, and believe he’s walking around me a lot of the time, which is very strengthening,’ he reveals.

This Christmas will be different to the others, says Gareth. For the first time in years, he is writing Christmas cards to people, and creating lots of ‘mad photos and videos’ to make memories for his three daughters and two grandchildren — ‘trying to get my voice down on as many recordings as I can, really’.

He relishes afternoons with Paula in West Cork — ‘Schull had been on the bucket list for years’ — and in the near future, he hopes to return to New York, and see parts of Scotland and Tuscany. ‘As far as a major bungee jump or anything...’ he smiles.

Gareth is contemplating creating a podcast, and is writing another book that he hopes will be released next year. He keeps in regular contact with his mother and his Dublin-based daughters, and Skypes Kerri, who is currently based in Australia.

‘I’m hoping she’ll come home for her 30th birthday,’ he admits. ‘How many more special occasions will I get to see down the years — ones you thought that you’d be automatically at?

‘Nothing is assumed now. Before, there were times you could loosely skip over, but you don’t know what the next birthday will be like.’

All the while, he meets others with MSA, also staring into an uncertain fate.

‘I met someone who was diagnosed with MSA last year, and he said, “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I felt better when I heard that you had it too”,’ he laughs. ‘It can be like meeting a pen pal you’ve had for 40 years, except it’s that you have this hideous thing in common.’